If you think modern weapons are complicated, consider the 17th and early 18th century frontiersman whose survival often depended on his ability to load and fire a flintlock rifle quickly. Loading and firing a flintlock was a twelve-step process that was not always successful. (Flintlock rifles were notoriously unreliable to fire.) Since Daniel Boone had a reputation for being a great marksman with his Kentucky rifle, he must have been a world-class rifleman, because he just loaded it and was ready to shoot, let alone hitting something with! It was a long and complicated process! !
Here are the twelve steps required to load and fire a flintlock or musket rifle:
1. Bite down on the paper cartridge and pry it open with your teeth.
2. Push forward (called tremble) forward and put a small amount of powder on the flash tray.
The powder in the pan was intended to ignite the main powder charge within the barrel’s firing chamber, which would then propel the lead ball out of the barrel. However, the spark from the flint often caused a rapid explosion in the pan that failed to ignite the main charge. This is where we get our expression, a “flash in the pan.”
3. Push the tremble Put it back in position to cover the flash tray.
4. Hold the musket with the barrel pointing upward.
5. Pour the rest of the powder into the barrel from the mouth.
6. Insert a lead ball into the barrel.
7. Push the paper from the cartridge into the drum (called “wadding”).
8. Remove the drumstick from its storage tube under the barrel and use it to push the batting and ball through the barrel.
This was easier to do with a musket than with a rifle. The barrel of the musket had a slightly larger diameter and its inner surface was polished and smooth. A rifle had spiral grooves cut into the metal inside the barrel, which caused the ball to rotate as it exited the barrel, thus increasing the accuracy of its flight. The bullet fit inside the barrel had to be tighter to impart spin, so the grooves and smaller diameter made it more difficult to ram the batting and ball into the firing chamber.
Rifles would fire further and with greater precision, but their slower rate of fire was the main reason why military units continued to use muskets until the late 19th century. In a battle, where time to reload and fire was a matter of life and death, rate of fire was an important consideration. The invention of metal cartridges and breech loading (loading the bullet through an opening in the rear of the barrel near the firing chamber) finally ended the musket’s dominance in military use.
9. Replace the drumstick in the storage tube.
10. Raise the musket to a firing position, resting the stock against the shoulder.
11. Pull the hammer back.
12. Point and shoot.
We’ve all seen scenes in movies where an intrepid frontier man, pressed by imminent danger, simply dropped the ramrod in the barrel and fired, rather than taking the precious extra seconds to lift it out of the barrel and put it back in the barrel. inside. storage pipe. The ramrod became part of the ammunition that exited the barrel when the charge was fired.
In an extreme situation where those few extra seconds were a matter of life and death, this could well have been done. But unless you had time to retrieve the ramrod from wherever it flew, the loss of it would render the weapon useless and it would be difficult to find a replacement at the border, so it seems unlikely that border men have made a habit of practice, unless you really It was a matter of life and death.
However, whatever happened to the drumstick once it was used, it follows from the steps above that loading and firing a flintlock pistol was far from a simple proposition. Daniel Boone with his Kentucky rifle and many other frontiersmen and soldiers who used flintlock weapons certainly deserve our admiration for being able to do so with such a high degree of skill and skill!